The next stop

I’m now a very small amount of paperwork away from completing my first semester as an English teacher, and I am happy to report that I have officially found a job in China.

It’s a one-year contract with a technical college in Yangzhou, which is a medium-sized city about an hour away from a big city called Nanjing and 3-4 hours from Shanghai. So for the next year, I’ll be teaching no more than 16 hours a week and making less than $800 a month, which I can apparently live comfortably on in China.

It’s a smallish city by Chinese standards, but it’s bigger than most cities in Thailand. It has all the essentials (bars, restaurants, shopping), but most people don’t speak English and I should continue to field regular questions about where I’m from, what my name is, and where I’m going.

Nearby Nanjing is a real city, with everything a person might want. But it sounds pretty authentically Chinese. My favorite example so far is this one: the trendy nightlife strip is called “1912,” to commemorate the year Sun Yat Sen toppled the Qing Dynasty.

I can’t wait to get there, but a month of backpacking through Thailand is not a bad way to pass the time. I’m leaving Chaiyaphum on Tuesday for an island in the South (still haven’t decided which one), then it’s on to Koh Tao, Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Krabi, and Cambodia.